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Talk:Clemens August von Galen
First historical of the new book. Turtle Fan 17:36, July 20, 2011 (UTC) :Anyway we can trim down the OTL section? While I think it's good to extol the virtues of a German critic of the Nazis, that section is way way longer than the TWPE section. TR 17:40, July 20, 2011 (UTC) ::I nipped and tucked a bit. It's still the longer section by far, but consider that he's had only one appearance (to date; I guess he could show up again later). I do want to have a meaty OTL section not only to celebrate his heroism but because an understanding of his history of defying the Nazis is really necessary to understanding the scene, and not much background is provided. All it says is that he's resisting attempts by the Nazis to gain political influence over the Church hierarchy and is maybe showing above-average levels of personal courage in doing so. If that's all someone knew, they might come away with the impression that the only reason he cared was that Hitler was encroaching on his turf, and he tried to raise the Jews' spirits because the enemy of his enemy is his friend. Turtle Fan 18:59, July 20, 2011 (UTC) The Jews are Protected by an outspoken Bishop? The DelRey Policy of having cover copy written by people who haven't read the book they are writing about is starting to make the company look bad. TR (talk) 20:19, August 1, 2012 (UTC) :Indeed. My all time favorite was TG: Something about Morrell using the paratroopers on the cover (who really didn't make much of a splash in the story anyway) followed by " . . . prompting Jake Featherston to retaliate with his newest weapon, the atomic bomb." :That being said, the fact that von Galen was arrested doesn't necessarily mean he won't end up protecting Jews later in the story. In OTL the Gauleiter of Munster wrote out a warrant for his arrest. Goebbels learned of it before it could be acted on, and countermanded it, fearing that it would end up causing exactly what HT's portrayed. We can say the difference here is that Goebbels didn't learn about it in time (making this, what, the fourth side-POD?) but once the riots start he, or someone anyway, will order von Galen released. At that point von Galen knows he's bulletproof, so he starts challenging the Nazis even more openly, and somehow makes sure that the international press gets to watch him do it. Then he redirects the protective circle of the spotlight onto Sarah and her family and friends. That fits with the oft-repeated theme in the various reviews and promotional material that the Nazis behave themselves better to keep the bad PR from pulling SecCo apart. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:33, August 1, 2012 (UTC) ::Well, at the very minimum, the discontent with the arrest among Catholics and the efforts to suppress that discontent may be planting seeds of some sort. TR (talk) 15:15, August 2, 2012 (UTC) :::That too. von Galen could be indirectly responsible, as the catalyst for something else. :::Oh, and it's not so much PR that's got the Nazis behaving. Harcourt's unit takes the southern half of this one village, a Waffen-SS unit takes the northern half. An old Jew comes out of hiding and gives Harcourt a bottle of Slivovitz, which he shares with Demange--thus making the Jew the first person I can recall Demange having a genuinely good word for. Then Harcourt's squad walks across town and finds the SS about to massacre the Jews in their half of town. Harcourt aims a rifle at their officer. Demange brings up the rest of the company. The SS officer threatens to report this to Demange's superiors, and Demange says that if he does he'll end up putting Germany back at war with France. The SS backs down. :::If French participation in SecCo has that effect, I'm almost hoping they remain on the side of the devils. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:44, August 2, 2012 (UTC) Well here's a bit of speculation that would have been far more interesting than the next-to-nothing that came of both those scenes. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:44, January 10, 2013 (UTC) Franz von Galen I found an article on Franz on the German language version of Wikipedia. If I can get it translated would it be worthwhile to migrate it over here and give us a new historical? As it is all I can make out are the dates of birth and death. There's no picture either. So it would say something like this: Franz von Galen (1879-1961) was the brother of Clemens August von Galen. Franz von Galen in The War That Came Early Franz von Galen was arrested by the Nazis in an attempt to silence his brother, Bishop Clemens von Galen. :Might as well. He's historical, and mentioning such things is in keeping with our policy on creating historicals generally. TR (talk) 20:04, July 8, 2014 (UTC) ::All right. And I found what might be a picture of him after all. It's also on a German page, but it too is an article on Franz. I wonder what he did that made him so memorable to his own people and so forgettable to us. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:19, July 8, 2014 (UTC) Rapid Promotions So when von Galen appeared in TBS, he was a bishop who expressed outrage over Nazi mistreatment of Jews, and Sarah's father wished there were more like him. I don't remember whether it was CdE or 2F when "Arcbbishop" von Galen protested confiscation of church property but didn't say anything about Jews. Now in LO (I'm eleven chapters in) I've come across two references to his protesting T4 but saying "not one word" about the Jews--and in the latter reference, he was a cardinal. Good thing this is the last book or next year he'd be Pope and the year after that . . . well, the only step up from there is God Himself. :I had wondered about that. I think HT means that von Galen was arrested for denouncing various things done by the Nazis including confiscation of church property and euthanasia of the disabled from literally the pulpit during a sermon. But he didn't do that about Jews. He expressed outrage at a public place in front of said Jews but didn't preach against it. On the other had, yes it could be lack of proofreading by Turtledove and his editors. ML4E (talk) 17:36, July 29, 2014 (UTC) ::He wrote a pastoral letter condemning the Nuremberg Race Laws and the National Socialist "worship of race" in general. He contributed extensively to an encyclical by Pius XI (written in German, not Latin) and read from every Catholic pulpit in Germany in the spring of 1937 that read in part "Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state . . . above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds." When some Nazi education minister insisted that the curriculum of Catholic schools be changed to emphasize how sinful and unworthy the Israelites were in Scripture, von Galen refused on the grounds that this was in conflict with the Christian virtue of charity. This was all before the POD. Your reading does hold true technically, but Goldman's comment would seem to be much, much wider than that. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:56, July 30, 2014 (UTC) :::Ah, I see what you mean. I didn't consider his OTL activity from before the POD. Still, I reread the scene where Samuel Goldman talks about his arrest (in Coup) and he talks about only the Bishop's public preaching as being the reasons for his arrest. ML4E (talk) 21:17, July 31, 2014 (UTC) ::::I just came across this little gem, which I'm afraid rules out your narrow interpretation: "The cardinal grr hadn't said a word about Jews; all the signs were that he couldn't have cared less about what happened to them." 273 ::::Never mind that HT's ignoring the Rathaus scene in TBS. von Galen was not as he's portrayed here. Yes, he attracted more attention for condemning T4 than for anything else he did, but he was a consistent human rights activist at a time when being such was deadly dangerous. Turning him into a one-trick pony like this, much less an all-out racist, feels downright libelous. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:37, August 1, 2014 (UTC) The different titles show that HT isn't bothering to proofread these references--odd given how central the whole drama is to the story at large. But contradicting both the historical record and HT's own scene isn't something that a proofreader could catch. It's a substantive change, and a terribly infuriating one at that. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:58, July 29, 2014 (UTC) :That drove me nuts, but it's not the worst of it. There is another error (unrelated to Galen) that comes in the last 20 pages or so of the book. I personally found it worse than the Galen stuff because it connects to an even bigger plot point for the series, and Turtledove SHOULD NOT have made it. TR (talk) 15:17, July 29, 2014 (UTC) ::Oh boy, can't wait. I'm finding the book very readable overall (despite the monotony of the combat scenes, which isn't quite as glaring as it used to be; at least by now the various POVs have made enough of an impression on me that I can tell who's who). I've also taken the liberty of flipping ahead a bit here and there (a bad habit in which I've freely indulged for years and years), so I have some idea of where we'll end up and I'm motivated to get there. So I'll probably be done by the end of this week or so. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:55, July 29, 2014 (UTC) ::I must have skipped over that but I only skimmed the book. Right now I'm about half way through a detailed read and am quite enjoying it. ML4E (talk) 17:36, July 29, 2014 (UTC) :::Me too. I look forward to starting a forum page and picking it apart when we're all done. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:56, July 30, 2014 (UTC) ::All right, I think I've found it: On page 379, HT's got Lord Halifax succeeding Chamberlain. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:07, August 2, 2014 (UTC) ::That's the one. I'm starting to think that HT had a bit of "writer's remorse" over selecting Wilson--Halifax actually was Chamberlain's preference in OTL, and steps had been taken to get past the fact that Halifax was a lord, but he didn't want the job, so Churchill got it. :::As Wilson was neither a peer nor an MP, I've always been very much at a loss as to how he could possibly have enjoyed Parliament's confidence. So I thought he was a terrible choice. But he was the choice HT made, so HT was stuck with him. :::And I don't believe it's fair to describe Halifax as pro-Nazi, either. First of all, "even more pro-Nazi" implies Chamberlain actually liked Hitler, whereas my read had always been more that he was a craven coward who backed down from a fight with a dangerous adversary. Halifax, though, was far more pragmatic. He looked at the state of the British armed forces in 1938 and concluded that they'd be outclassed against the Axis. As he saw it, the only way they could hope to stand against Germany and Italy was to cut their Asian forces to the bone at the very moment Japan was backing out of its alliance with the UK and pursuing an ever-more aggressive foreign policy--and that isolationism was waxing in what should have been Britain's natural ally in such a struggle. So Halifax sought to avoid what he saw as an unwinnable war. That's hardly the same as actually liking the enemy ideology. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:39, August 3, 2014 (UTC) ::Or, HT just didn't catch that one, which does leave me with concerns about the man's health, honestly. TR (talk) 23:54, August 2, 2014 (UTC) :::Hmm, there's a thought I hadn't had, and now that I've had it I don't care for it. HT is sixty-five years old, so it's not unfair to raise the question. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:39, August 3, 2014 (UTC)